Consumers of television services greatly enjoy being able to record linear content items to re-watch content items after an initial time of broadcast or to shift when they view specific content items to a more convenient time. Consumers, however, do not always have access to hardware capable of recording linear content items in their homes, such as a Digital Video Recorder (DVR), and may instead use cloud-based Digital Video Recorders (cDVR) to store content with a service provider. Recording content items on a cDVR offers the added benefits for consumers that no bulky equipment (or less bulky equipment) needs to be installed or maintained in the home and that the recorded content may be accessed on the go or from multiple locations. For example, a consumer may have recorded content on a cDVR and may access that content while on vacation, travelling to work, or otherwise away from the home.
Content providers, however, try to limit the amount of storage consumers use from the cDVR service, and thereby reduce the amount of hardware that must be maintained to provide the cDVR system. For example, different tiers for subscriber accounts may limit the amount of storage available to consumers, auto-delete policies or prompts to delete viewed content may be provided to limit the use of storage space. These solutions are often arbitrary and result in the misallocation of computer-readable storage media, consumer frustration, and excess data transmission. For example, a consumer may be assigned a block of storage, but never use that storage to its capacity, thus wasting resources. In another example, the content provider may transmit requests to prompt the consumer to delete older or already viewed recorded content, which the consumer ignores or responds to in the negative (i.e., do not delete the referenced recording), which uses bandwidth and may frustrate the consumer after repeated requests.